Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [245]
Ivins kept harping on his literary productivity. One exchange between them caused gasps around the courtroom:
IVINS Since [1898] you have probably written more than any other man in the United States, haven’t you?
TR I don’t know, but I have written from 100,000 to 150,000 letters.
When he returned to the witness chair on Friday, Ivins asked why, after more than ten years of working with Barnes, he had excluded the boss from his autobiography.
“I particularly wished not to make any wanton or malicious attack on him.”
Ivins tried to disconcert him by revealing that many of the things he had said about the plaintiff in court were taken, word for word, from his general remarks on corruption in that Barnes-free book. “It is because of your excellent memory, is it not?”
Roosevelt let the sarcasm go. He had noticed that he had an avid audience in the jury. They leaned forward every time he spoke, as if activated by a jolt of electric current. He began to address them directly, and Ivins scolded him.
COURT Mr. Ivins, this witness will be treated as any other ordinary witness. I cannot have any discussion of that kind in this court room.
IVINS I apologize to your Honor.
Returning to Roosevelt’s autobiography, Ivins quoted a line about Senator Platt, Some of his strongest and most efficient lieutenants were disinterested men of high character, and asked if Barnes was included. The Colonel hedged. “Mr. Ivins, that is not a question that I could answer by a yes or no. Do you wish me to answer how I feel about it?”
“If you cannot answer it, I do not care for your feelings. I want to know whether you can answer yes or no.”
Andrews ruled that Roosevelt must respond accordingly. The stenographer repeated Ivins’s question.
TR Now—
IVINS No, one moment—I ask for a categorical answer. Yes or no?
TR Then I must answer you, no.… That I did not so include him.
IVINS Then I will ask you this. If you did not so regard him as a man of high character, why did you invite him to the executive mansion? Why did you consult him in the Capitol? Why did you associate with him? Why did you advise with him?
TR Because I thought he was above the average of the ordinary political leaders.… I believed that he had it in him…to become a most useful servant of the state, and I believed that there was a good chance of him so becoming.
BOWERS (hinting) Have you finished, Mr. Roosevelt?
TR I have.
For the first time, the defendant was beginning to sound like a small boy trying to fib his way out of a situation. By using the phrase some of to qualify his praise of Platt’s aides in 1899–1900—a group effectively consisting only of Barnes—Roosevelt the autobiographer had adopted a technique he affected to despise in other writers: the employment of “weasel words” that sucked the specificity out of statements. Some of enabled him to plead that he had not, in fact, ever thought of Barnes as a “disinterested man of high character.” He now cast about desperately for another literary device to save himself, and thought of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel about a man both good and evil. That was it: Barnes was “Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He said he had known only the former during his time as governor.
Ivins noted that he had, nevertheless, retained Barnes in a position of high Republican responsibility long after becoming President in 1901. Roosevelt said he had done so as a consequence of his vow to honor President McKinley’s legacy. Ivins asked if that had still been the case on 29 January 1907, when he wrote to Barnes on White House stationery: It was a pleasure to send your reappointment [as surveyor of the port of Albany] to the Senate today. Sincerely, Theodore Roosevelt.
TR Yes, sir.
IVINS Then which Mr. Barnes—Mr. Jekyll Barnes or Mr. Hyde Barnes, did you appoint to office and express your pleasure in appointing?
TR I appointed Mr. Barnes to office and until 1910 I hoped that we were going to get his Dr. Jekyll side uppermost, and I did not abandon hope until 1911.
Ivins let this protestation speak